In the middle of March we hosted a day of service at Riverstone with many different goals in mind. We wanted to maintain some of the existing areas of campus landscaping, add habitat of birds and tie it into the Butterfly Garden, and increase the area of campus planted with native grasses. Thanks to Ben Brock, Linda Morrison and Kim Fall for making this a smooth and successful event!

Saftey talk and prework planning!

A helper is always nice!

I salvaged some blue fescue from my yard.

SustainingUS purchased more Great Basin wildrye from Draggin’ Wing Farm

We also purchased a few more Indian ricegrass.

Some of the Indian ricegrass was divided from our previous plantings!

We selected these particular grasses because they are native, drought tolerant, and low maintenance, these will match the planting we installed for Day of Service last year!

Before: these grasses need to be trimmed to make room for this year’s growth.

After: the students can take pride in the landscape in the gym entrance, after all that is the modern school colosseum.

It’s never a good idea to have turf and trees competing – plus look how nice that tree well looks filled with arborist’s chips!

For one project we maintained the existing plantings in front of the the Gym. We trimmed the grasses, pruned out issues with trees, and edged tree wells into the turf and filled them with wood mulch- these will be much happier and healthier landscapes with just a little bit of maintenance!

Another goal for the day was installing new bird and pollinator habitat in a bed at the school entrance. We added an Amelanchier alnifolia aka serviceberry (to celebrate Riverstone’s Day of Service being the event it was planted during) which will provide flowers for the pollinators and food for the chickadees. We also planted milkweed seeds to continue the habitat started with the butterfly garden. Two small touches we added were tulips and marigold seed bombs (made by the PreK students click to see the post!)

Before: a nearly empty bed

After: what a great addition to the grounds!

Removing old stumps is a chore, but the chickadees will appriciate the new spruce!

New tree installed. Notice the mulched in tree-rings and the trimmed grasses in the background.

A solid effort! Thanks!

Before: a rock mulch bed

After: we converted it to wood mulch to better feed the plants and alter the maintenance requirements.

We added many native grasses, with the goal of increasing available habitat for birds like Finches.

One Comment

Linda Morrison

April 9, 2016 - at 8:13 am

Great work party. It is amazing how much can be accomplished with hard working students on a sunny March morning. Thanks for inviting me. It was my pleasure!